"Double shot latte for Jane!"

"Thanks," Jane muttered with a small, preoccupied smile as she took her drink from the counter, her other hand busy holding one thick spiral notebook, the edges tattered and the pages stuffed with scraps of paper. The whole thing was covered her chicken-scratch handwriting, all nearly incomprehensible to any outsider. Her earth-brown eyes were unerringly focused on the page she had opened to as she took her first sip of her latte. It was scaldingly hot, but she didn't seem to notice as she turned to walk back to her tiny table in the corner of the café.

That can't be right, she thought, frowning mightily at her notebook as she slid into her seat, her elbow nearly bumping her laptop off of the table and onto the floor. Finally looking away from the formula that was causing her so much grief, the graduate student set down her drink and pushed her laptop aside, making room for her many highlighters, pens, and half-eaten blueberry muffin. She blew out a huff of frustration as she tried to arrange her things as she liked it on the tiny table, inwardly muttering about Darcy and her many dalliances and how next time she would demand she take her men elsewhere.

If she was at their apartment, she could have had all of her textbooks, piles of notes, her own cup of burnt coffee, and maybe even a bowl of cold leftover pasta, all artfully arranged around her in a chaotic melee that only she could work in. Plus, she would have a decent WiFi connection, unlike at the coffee shop.

"Iced Chai for Ron!"

Jane ran a hand through her hair, the dark locks mussed from how many times she had touched them after she had been booted out of her apartment by her troublesome roommate. Darcy and her boyfriend had been off and on for months now, and Jane would be lying if she said she didn't miss it when they were off. When they were together, it became almost impossible to spend time in their apartment, even in her room. They weren't exactly the quietest couple in the world. If it wasn't the very creative sex, it was the fighting, and if it wasn't the fighting, it was the horrible slasher flicks those two liked to watch at full blast. She had tried headphones and earplugs, but neither of them ever seemed to work. Jane liked working in silence, and craved the sensory deprivation when she was trying to put together the pieces of a particularly hard formula, and lately she just seemed unable to find it.

Leaning back in her uncomfortable chair, the young woman sighed heavily and lifted her latte to her lips once more, her tired eyes sweeping over the customers of the café with little interest. It was time for a bit of a break from her work, because she was at the point again where she was contemplating throwing her lease out the window and finding a new apartment. She didn't want that – not really, anyway. Darcy was her friend. She was allowed to have fun with her boyfriend in her home, and if she went by the increasing frequency of their breakups, they probably wouldn't be together for much longer anyway.

Sucking in a deep breath, Jane rolled her shoulders to be rid of a kink in them and reminded herself of that fact a few more times. Summer was only a few weeks away, Erik was waiting to take her on a trip to Sweden, and soon the awful noises that filled their apartment would be a distant and heavily buried memory.

"Green tea fo-"

Jane sipped at her latte absently as her eyes swung toward the counter, where a man was brusquely accepting his drink from the barista. He was tall and lean, dressed all in a fine black suit and with hair of similar coloring, swept behind his ears in a way that she found to look quite pretentious. One long-fingered hand had snatched the green tea from the girl's hand. His actions were somehow simultaneously aloof and contemptuous, and not even a thank you seemed to escape him as he turned to walk towards an empty table behind Jane. She couldn't see his face from where she sat, and Jane quickly dismissed him as too rich and too snobby to check out anyway.

There was a prickle at the back of her neck soon after she looked away, but she quickly dismissed it as the man looking her way as he sat down. Or perhaps it was the fact that she had ingested three double shot lattes in the past six hours. Shrugging her shoulders both in dismissal and as a poor excuse for a stretch, she swallowed one last swig of her latte and leaned forward to wake up her laptop, her e-text book popping up as the screen came back to life.

Why is String Theory such a bitch to get down on paper? she thought, scowling at the innocent words on the screen. She had been stuck on this particular equation for two days now, and Jane rather thought that if she didn't get it soon, she would chuck her laptop, forgo her dreams of that doctorate, and disappear into the Amazon jungle.

"You make very uncomely expressions, Jane Foster," a low, almost raspy voice noted, breaking through the haze of caffeine and frustration that had blocked out the rest of the café from her mind.

"Excuse me?" she exclaimed, nonplussed, as she sat back from her computer, her indignant expression focusing on the tall stranger standing before her, all broad shoulders and oozing condescension.

The man arched a perfectly groomed brow, his thin lips turned down in small, disgusted frown. "And deaf as well as uncomely, how tragic," he clucked with mock sadness. Lifting his paper cup of tea to his lips, he leveled her with a look that told her he thought her thick in the head as well.

The man was all pale skin and sharp features, high, aristocratic cheekbones, thin lips, sharply angled jaw, and a nose that looked pointy enough to take an eye out. But of all those things, two parts of him stood out the most – his eyes. Incredibly green affairs with lashes long enough to brush his cheeks when he blinked, and his height. He towered over her as if she were a child, and even though she was sitting, Jane was dismayed to realize that if she were to stand, at the most she could only be up to his bicep.

"Do I know you or something?" she demanded, cheeks flushing with embarrassment at being insulted by some gargantuan in a fancy suit. Furious and at the end of her wits after such a frustrating day, Jane opened her mouth tell him to get the hell away from her, when she made the mistake of blinking.

It was only half a second, hardly something she even noticed, but when she focused her eyes again after that briefest of moments, he was gone. The brunette stared at the place the man had stood, her mouth open, and her words dying on her tongue in the face of the empty space in front of her.

"We've certainly gotten lucky with you, haven't we?" the man drawled, making her head snap to the previously empty seat on the opposite side of the table. He was lounging there with his long legs crossed, his coat slung over the back of the seat, and his fingers plucking a chuck of her half eaten blueberry muffin from her plate as casual as if he had been there the whole time – which he certainly had not.

"How did yo-"

"Hush now," he told her, smoothly cutting her off. His eyes had not even deigned to look her way as he used two elegant fingers to turn her worn notebook his way, "I have things to say and little patience to spare. I know who you are, Jane Foster. I know who your parents are, your grade point average, even your blood type." He used his little finger to turn the page, his long lashes lowering over his eyes as he examined the scribbled text on the page, completely ignoring the disturbed look on her face and how she was slowly pushing herself away from the table.

"I would not suggest leaving, Miss Foster," he calmly warned. "If we know so much, do you not think we do not know where your apartment is? Don't insult me." The man lifted his cup from the table, took a slow sip, and then slowly set it down. Though, for some reason Jane could not explain, she did not take the opportunity to run screaming or demand to know who the hell he was. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was fear. Or maybe it was that niggling feeling in the most primal part of her brain that her DNA had retained after generations of being removed from the plains of Africa, telling her that this man was a predator. Telling her that if she moved, he would pounce, and her chance at making her way up the evolutionary ladder would be over in an instant.

Finally, he looked up at her, his eyes dragging a slow path from the notes on the lined pages of her notebook to her eyes. "Listen well," he instructed smoothly, an almost benevolent look on his pale face, were it not for the tell-tale sheen of something like madness in those pretty green eyes, "you are about to become very important, Jane Foster. What you were, what you wanted, who you wanted before this point is naught but ash." He leaned forward, his lips twitching upward in a predatory grin that held something like glee in it. One long, wiry arm braced itself on the table, covering her notebook and effectively crowding her in against the wall behind her.

Jane suddenly felt smothered, like he was much larger than her earlier estimate, that the walls around her were much closer, and that the air in the café suddenly felt so much heavier than it usually did. She felt like a caged animal, and that was utterly absurd. Anger suffused her fear, her ashen cheeks filling with life as she opened her mouth to tell him to fuck off to whatever loony bin he had crawled out of.

"Do not interrupt," his voice cut like a whip through her bravado, all false warmth and benevolence replaced by a chill she could almost feel on her skin. His eyes pinned her there, and if she believed in those sorts of silly things, she would say that he was reading every thought that passed through her head. "I am Loki, son of Laufey, Prince of the Unseelie," he announced, voice hushed and smooth, but somehow louder than every other sound of the bustling coffee shop around them, "and I intend to use you to the fullest advantage."

His lips pulled back in something like a smile, but it was too wide, with too many teeth and too little sincerity, turning it into something like the barring of teeth just before a growl. He was close, close enough for her to smell the expensive cologne he wore and close enough to see the individual lashes that ringed those piercing eyes of his. Too close.

Jane's sense seemed to return to her as she violently pushed her chair back from the table, smacking it against the wall loudly enough that customers and a few baristas looked her way disapprovingly. Couldn't they see that she was being harassed?

"Okay, crazy," she announced somewhat loudly, her voice high with nerves as she snapped her laptop shut and began to stuff everything into her bag as quickly as she was able, "I don't know how you know my name, but I really don't care. Just stay the hell away from me, got it?" She snatched her notebook from under his arm with shaking fingers, and blatantly avoided looking at his face as she pushed it half-hazardly into her bag and stood, nearly toppling her chair over in her haste. Jane slung her bag over shoulder and reached for her cup, but his hand snaked out to snatch her wrist before she could touch it, his fingers closing over her delicate bones with the gentlest of pressure. Though it was in such a way that let her know he was not going to let her go unless he felt like it.

A loud profanity was on her lips, something to kick up a ruckus and make this insane man release her when everyone looked their way, but he stopped her by speaking first. "Jane," he murmured, as softly as if he were speaking to a lover, "your life has just become forfeit to a greater game than you realize. You will see it soon, and when you do, you will need to pick a side." He stood slowly, looming over her like a great shadow, the perfectly crisp whiteness of his button-down shirt contrasting sharply with the raven black hair that brushed his collar as he leaned down to whisper in her ear. His breath was cool – cooler than it should have been, as if he had just been holding ice cream in his mouth, not steaming tea, and it stirred the strands of her dark hair in a way that tickled her neck.

"The Seelie are slow, thick creatures, but they will find you soon, dumb as they are." His lips brushed her ear, cooler than his breath, and she stood stock still, too disturbed to move. He gently lifted her arm and pressed his thumb to the fluttering pulse on her wrist. "I intend to win this before they can enter the game," he continued, sucking in an audible breath through his nose; whether it was to smell her hair or give his words a dramatic pause, she couldn't tell, "so I will be seeing you again, Miss Foster. Very soon. I would advise you to keep your doors locked, but it will not help."

The very tip of his nose nudged her temple as he pulled away, his long, lithe body straightening up in a way that vaguely reminded her of how a cobra draws itself up before it strikes. The renewed distance between them was like a too tight belt being released, and suddenly she could breathe again, even though she did not realize she had ever stopped. But even as he took a step back, his hand lingered on his wrist, holding it as delicately and carefully as one would be when handling an injured bird, if it weren't for the unsettling coolness of his skin that had goose bumps rising on her arms she might have even said it felt nice. His thumb gently pressed against her pulse, feeling the nervous drumming of her heart, and a smug, predatory look crossed his aristocratic features at the feeling.

"Screw you," she squeaked pathetically as she tore her arm away and plowed past him, the whites of her eyes showing glaringly as she fought to control the way the surge of adrenalin her fear created that made her thin body shake like a leaf. Jane walked as fast as she could, forgoing her latte and muffin without a thought, and yet it still felt like the longest walk of her life. The graduate student burst through the glass doors of the café, the bells dangling from the handle making a horrible clanging noise against it, rather than the musical jingle it made when she came in. She did not slow down until she was well past the café, her heart in her throat and her hand clutching the strap of her bag so tightly her knuckles were paper white.

It wasn't until she was several streets down that she calmed her pace into something resembling a normal walk. Though her breathing was labored and her expression clearly startled, the farther away she was from the café, the more her rational mind returned to her, and the easier it was to completely dismiss the crazy man in the nice suit as just that: mad.

Seelie? Unseelie? Prince Loki? She shook her head, trying to slow her heart down as she neared her apartment building. That guy was completely off his rocker. It wasn't the first time she had run into mentally ill people in the city, and the more she rationalized the whole encounter by telling herself he just had some weird psychotic break, the better she felt. People with mental issues said weird stuff all the time. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Taking in several deep breaths, she unlocked the door to her apartment and slipped inside, momentarily forgetting to check if it was still occupied.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Darcy asked as her roommate slipped into the living room, hair a windblown mess, papers sticking out of her bag, and a wide-eyed look on her ashen face. Jane blinked, finally focusing on the brunette on the small, battered couch they shared, finally coming back to herself.

"Where's Alex?" Her body builder boyfriend was conspicuously absent, which only served to improve her frazzled mood, really.

Darcy shrugged casually, but her keen eyes never left her friend's face. There was a story there, and she intended on hearing it. "Went for pizza," she explained, eyeing the distracted way her friend seemed to be looking around, as if she expected some loon to jump out from behind the bookshelves. "Come're, crazy-eyes," she said, waving Jane over to the empty side of the couch, "what the hell happened while you were out?"

Shaking her head, Jane dropped her heavy book bag down on the floor by the side of the couch, her shoulder aching from how she had strained it with the weight of her computer and notebooks in her mad dash from the café. The brunette ran a shaking hand through her mussed hair and plopped down on the couch beside her friend, accepting the bottle of beer that was wordlessly offered despite the fact that it was warm and half-finished by someone else. Taking a deep swig, the woman took a moment to compose herself before she began.

"You would not believe what happened to me at the café just now."

.

She is pretty enough, for a mortal, Loki thought as he watched her flee from him, as if the hounds of Hell were on her heels. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his tea to his lips, his eyes sweeping over the other patrons of the café with amusement. No doubt to them Jane's flight from the handsome stranger who was being nothing but sweet to her looked quite strange, and that little bit of mischief he had created gave him a tiny bit of satisfaction.

Jane had a sweet face, that was true, even if she was prone to making odd, scrunched expressions when she was concentrating. But even if her face was homely, her body repugnant, and her voice cringe-worthy, it wouldn't matter. Her worth was not based on her looks – although it certainly did ease the blow he would have to take, now that he saw she was not awful. Jane Foster was as small as a child and seemed awfully dimwitted, but she would have to do.

Loki set down his cup and lifted Jane's half-eaten muffin to his face, slowly turning it this way and that before his eyes. She had taken a few bites out of the confection, and when he found the spot that looked freshest, the man lifted it to his mouth and took a large bite. He didn't really care for blueberry, but that wasn't what he was after.

Her taste was faint under the layers of sugar and berries of the muffin, but it was there, and it was delicious. Loki closed his eyes as he chewed, his arms crossing over his chest as he savored the taste of her on his tongue. He didn't care about Jane in the slightest, but what she had in her, the potential she carried, was what mattered. She was much too small to be considered desirable to an Unseelie, but Loki knew that any of his kind would fight to the death to have this little mortal bound to them. However, he was Prince – soon he would be King, he reminded himself – and therefore he got first rights.

So long as the Seelie do not kidnap her and drag her away, of course. Just the reminder of the threat to his power those brutes posed made the sweet taste of the muffin sour in his mouth. He swallowed forcefully and smoothly stood, pulling his suit jacket back on before turning, tea in hand, and walking out of the café.

He had spies all over the city, many of them now placed near Jane's grubby little apartment, but now that he had made contact with her, he fully intended on taking this on himself. His subordinates had a way of constantly muddling up his plans, so he would do it himself. Thor was no doubt on his way with his hand of idiots to snatch his prize away. He could not let that happen. Jane was too important to his position and his people to allow her to slip into Seelie hands.

The Seelie were beautiful, with their golden hair and sweet faces, all gallant and just – just thinking about them made Loki's stomach turn. They were idiots, all of them, and if he could, he would wipe them off of the cosmic plane in an instant.

Loki pulled his phone out of his pocket and selected a contact before he held it to his ear, his long legs leading him down the streets he knew Jane took to go home. He had a driver, and if he liked he could magick himself there in an instant, but if he really wanted to get in her head, he needed to do as she did, and so he walked. "Has she arrived yet?" he asked sharply in lieu of a greeting when his guard picked up his call.

"Yes, your highness," he immediately replied, voice low and gravelly, the way that most Unseelie voices were.

"Who else is with her?"

"The roommate only. Her male companion is out."

Loki nodded to himself, pleased with the turn of events. It was good that she was in her pathetic little domicile, where she could be watched every moment of the day, but something had to change. "Get rid of the roommate," he commanded, his voice slightly lower than usual. It was all he could do to hold onto the power he had over his fellow Unseelie, every little bit counted. He had to sound stronger than them, even if he was considered almost deformed by most of his kin. "Do not allow the boyfriend back in. I want her alone."

When his man confirmed that it would be done, Loki ended the call, stuffing the phone back in his pocket. Jane's apartment building was looming ahead of him down the street. He had to move fast, or else this magnificent opportunity would be lost, and she would go to the Seelie.

This war cannot be lost.